I Failed The Recipe

Oh my. I just baked what has to be the world's ugliest cake. See for yourself. It's so butt-ugly that I can't stop laughing. I mean Spinal Tap-funny laughing! If you can top this, I dare you to try. It was supposed to be a surprise for my niece Emma's Sweet Sixteen birthday. Fortunately, Emma has a highly developed sense of humor. Sorry Emma. Just concentrated proof of my downward mobility.

And yes, Ava thought it was pretty awful too. She said, "Hey Mom, you just made a real mud pie." She loved the fact that most of the actual cake, which tasted delicious, was left hanging precariously along the bottom of the pans though, and wasted no time in scooping up about 60% to cram in her mouth. Another 10% fell on the floor which made Zelma very happy too. NEVER grease cake pans with vegetable oil and powdered cocoa.

Back to Barbie.com karoke for me.

Palmetto State Blues

I'm ashamed to be a native South Carolinian right now. All Rightist Republican smear campaign roads lead straight back to my home state, the backwater swamp that spawned Lee Atwater. The SC idiot-ridden populace aided and abetted the trashing of John McCain's good name and image at time when he, McCain, was getting ready to wipe the floor with W's smirky, frat boy face.

Most South Carolina retards were merrily led via their bovine-like natures, which are quite easily herded into any racist or homophobic frenzy, by Atwater's hideous Toad Man, that devil-spawn He Who Must Not Be Named - Lord Voldemort Rove. Like taking candy from a baby it was so easy, so backwoods is this place.

South Carolina was where Rove honed his power-crazed, mad wizzardry that ultimately led him smugly right on into the Oval Office, where he now sits on the right hand of Smirking Frat Boy and oversees this ultimate wipe-out of anything remotely associated with political truth in America.

I wish I could articulate my anger better over this hideous fleecing we've been hounded into by Republican operatives and conformist, grinning, little truth-eating creatures such as Rove and Robertson and Delay, and every mega-church "disciple" following their retards-only, talking-points road to some tacky-as-shit Judgemental Mall of The Americas. Fortunately, Paul Krugman, in his column today titled Karl Rove's America, is here to tell the story with a little more clarity than I can muster right now.

Sorry-ass, piss-ant state filled with the stupidest, most stubborn, un-evolved Muggles on the planet, excepting some of my immediate family members of course and assorted blogger-psychiatrists. I'm never going back. So there. I know they're all crying in their grits at the thought.

I Heart The Internet - For This Alone

Are you ready to live the bullshit-free life? Toss the pointless relationships that mean absolutely nothing to the whole story you vaguely associate with your Big Quest For Inner Fabulousness? Stand up, be a Real Girl (remember them Catherine? circa '84 I believe!) and start being the hottie of your own dreams. And if you STILL need help on figuring out how to do it, then send these gals a line for some serious real-time advice - if you dare!

Meow Mix

Women! Whatcha gonna do with 'em besides f-'em? They're just too catty and too liberal. Silly us. Here's an excellent column on women opinionists, or lack thereof in the mainstream media.

Lemme just let anyone who reads this in on a little secret: I've contributed "guest" op-eds to the local papers here for about seven years now. I've long lost count of the actual number, but it's up there with total wackos like Susan Estrich fer sure. And I'm just a little bit over being dumbed-down to chronic "guest" status. (Oops. Is my "cattiness" showing? Oh let me apologize immediately. I'm sooooo sorry.)

So if anyone who gives a flying "f" has 3 seconds outta their non-political, busy schedules to give me, please shoot the Op/Ed editor, David Beasley, at the AJC an e-mail asking that they consider running my work on a regular basis. He's at: dbeasley@ajc.com. Call me totally insane for wanting to be a regular, liberal opinionist at a major daily, but hey, what do I know? I'm just a girl.

Blogging Priests

While I eat Cheetos and read the National Enquirer by the Cross Creek pool, all the while ignoring Ava's many "watch me Mommys," our rector from All Saints' here in Atlanta, "Sir" Geoffrey Hoare, is on this amazing, head-inflating tour of Europe and blogging busily away as he merrily expands his horizons. His blog really is something to take a look at.

Here's an interesting tidbit-exerpt from it:

"The classical, the modern, the post modern and so on all need each other, but life is found in and flows from that which is new, creative, sometimes considered ugly at first (Remember how Rodin and the Impressionists were never really acceptable to the academy or in Rodin’s case many who commissioned his work.) The new is dependent on the old yet does not supersede it. I am reminded of how John A. T. Robinson, author of Honest to God (1963) used to talk of how a true radical must be thoroughly ‘rooted’ in the tradition."

(NOTE: To be honest, I don't remember anything about Rodin not finding acceptance by the "academy." But I can tell you all about Gram Parsons having been rejected by the mainstream Nashville scene. I think that's kinda what Geoffery's gettin' at here. Although I doubt Sir Geoffrey's been thinking a whole lot about country music lately.)

Hey Hey Ho Ho, Karl Rove's Gotta Go

Jon Stewart on the White House Press Corps' recent performance:
"We have secretly replaced the White House press corps with actual reporters."

Can you believe it? The White House press corps has finally emerged from whatever stupor it's been under since 9/11. About freakin' time. It's got a heap of catching up to do, and let's hope "it" is not returned to its previous pathetic state-o-mind when the Supreme Court nomination(s) arises soon.

Read for yourself the absolute nothingness of a Bush Administration in deep doo-doo, rivaled only by the nothingness you will find on this blog.


"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it." Edmund R. Murrow

Shame and Hope

From today's NYT...

Here's the world created by racism, violence, hatred, greed, war, terrorism and utter senselessness. Anyone who supports any act of cruelty towards a fellow human being, or who watches passively and allows it to go on, or supports it politically, is simply a stinking evil coward, perpetuating a culture of horror and grief and suffering on the entire world.

And here's the face of hope, also from today's NYT.

We are not afraid of:

• terrorists
• politically-motivated perpetuators of war
• consumeristic greed
• manufactued "values"
• attempts to create a mass culture of fear
• their intolerance and exclusion and false piety
• an evil adminsitration that has tried to manipulate the entire world.

Get it folks... WE ARE NOT AFRAID!

Please, let's all do what whatever we can to stop this idiotic "War On Terrorism." This is not a war on terrorism (the above photo is the real war on terrorism), but a war machine we were ALL misled into launching by blood-thirsty, riotousness liars, fear-mongers, scam-artists and power-crazed hawks.

This talking-points, PR-ridden, manipulative, evil adminsitration does not share MY values. (And mine are DAMN GOOD ones, thank you very much!)

Let's work hard to stop this war now. Bullet-point THAT.

"It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead." Joseph Heller , Catch-22

Say Yes To Wow

Is your sex life just not the WOW you always dreamed of? Well, who's isn't, but don't freak out - help is on the way! My friend and brilliant writer and just really damn good person on this planet, Michael Alvear, is coming to HBO to save us all. Michael has been living his fabulous life in London on British TV this summer, as co-host of a Channel 4 reality show called Sex Inspectors. And now HBO has bought the show, a serious WOW for Michael and all those who know him and are just thrilled to see him "take off" so.

The British version of the show will begin weekly air on HBO, starting September 1 at 11pm. So subscribe now and sit back and watch Michael become a star. And believe me, I wouldn't even brag about having a friend in TV, but if anyone has worked so hard at his craft for so long, and if there's anyone out there who deserves to have good, successful things in his life, then it's Michael. He's just a really cool, decent, kind person who manages to take time out from his insanely busy schedule to encourage me to keep writing. Simply put, he helps me keep hope in my life.

When I first started writing and trying to publish little things here and there, Michael was the first person I turned to for advice and help. He extended a hand of kindness and encouragement to me at a time in my life when I thought such things were impossible. He didn't have to do this.

Michael was a successful gay man who, on the surface, I had virtually nothing in common with. He could have brushed me aside like a gnat, but he didn't do that. He took the time to meet with me and talk with me and email me notes of encouragement and invite me to parties, and things like that. I doubt he knows what an influence he's been on me, as he likely thought nothing of being such a genuinely kind, good person. But I was suffering from serious "I'm A Nobody" syndrome at the time I first sought out his guidance. And I may still be a big nobody, but you know, I can deal with that now! And that's in no small part due to Michael's friendship.

So wish him well, invite your friends over, raise a glass to love and hope and sex and dreams, and tune in on Sept. 1st to see the face of deserving success. And oh boy is it a beautiful one - in every sense of the word.

Things You Find Along The Path, If Not Yourself

Whew...

Also, here's a poem from way back when, off of my old website, WaySouth. Seems right again now that it's summer.

Woman Working In Summertime
Summer was here. Same things returned with it, no matter where the company sent its people. Dash from the city heat into the dark, dank air-conditioning of a liquor store. More gin for the tonic. Back out into the glare.

Sunglasses get slammed down from the top of the head. Back at the room-bar, the medicinal lime fizzes the tip of the businesswoman's nose while she takes a sip back to salted porch furniture and the incomprehensible buzz of grownups talking: to the house on The Island for an agitating two weeks. Aunt Bunny's bathing costume is as faded as her Labrador's muzzle.

Everyone never fails to mention how athletic Aunt Bunny was in her day. A beautiful tennis player. Right. Right. Credibility lost long ago on the woman. Bunny had never bothered her Dior lips to boast a confirmation. She was athletic after all. Not a teller of stories.

Aunties and cousins are shrugged off as simply as brushing off sand from the underside of your thighs. The meeting speaker talks about 'cultivating your people-base.' The businesswoman believes she is more a cutter than a cultivator.

She thinks about the gardenia bush behind the beach house -- the house before Hurricane Hugo. The woman thinks pre-hurricane when she remembers her summer times. She was already a professional by the time the big storm came through and caused another house.

The speaker is now saying there are actually four categories of people. Hurricanes have more than that notes the businesswoman. The secret to success in the business world is knowing what kind of people you have working for you, what category they fit into. None of the literature pertains to gardenias. They will be tested for their category nonetheless.

The woman wonders if smelling gardenia blossoms can be addictive. The scent is probably too funereal for that. Too much like church with its heaviness. The business lady is sleepy. Her eyes wander out the windows. "Probably" is not a power word. She uses it all the time. I have bad habits - she supposes.

The speaker does not use the word "funereal" at any time. The people-base in the room is busy at listening well, but she suspects the men of contemplating the airing of their pop-up camper when they get home.

The woman thinks -- inside the pop-up camper box. She knows a couple who bought one recently. They are the only people in their thirties she knows who have purchased anything remotely like that. For some reason, she was surprised to see that pop-up campers were still being manufactured.

The couple had shown the woman a brochure of their pop-up model. It looked cumbersome and over-ripe. That must be why the listening people-base is thinking of airing them out. They have their own summertime to return to.

She doesn't hear a sound of ice cubes clinking in pop-up campers. There are sticky, plastic cups of leftover baby juice baking in the pop-up sink. She hears nothing but that the group is now informed and adjourned.

Her people-base awaits her arrival at the Crown Room. Gin and tonic please. Summer is here. Business lady would like to get to it before they call her flight.

Re-Educate This

The Motherhood has worked me over good this time. It must take me up to the mothership every night and drain my brain something fierce, then set me right back down in la-la land. Everything's confusing me lately. I can't for the life of me figure out if Lil' Kim is now headed to the pokey for refusing to reveal that Karl Rove was seen with WMDs, the wife of a CIA agent and assorted rap stars outside of a nightclub in Mombasa on the night Warren Zevon died.

The whole Judith Miller thing is troubling, because I must confess that for a while there I wasn't really sure if she should be rotting in jail alongside Lil' Kim. And, gulp, I actually subscribe to the NYT. Now if I only would read the thing the way I always intend to every morning at breakfast, I'd have long ago figured out that she, Miller, (hell, Lil' Kim too for not asking if her dates came with guns) should stay there for a good long while, as the rumor is that Karl Rove is The Source. Big shocker there. Judith Miller, essentially, helped furnish the whole WMD house for chrissake. She was practically the freakin' PR agent for the whole Talking Points Administration! Oh my.

I had no idea. I've been pretty busy lately with watching Ava's ongoing reenactment, typically in the front yard of the condo complex, of that critical scene in Racing Stripes where the heroine, Channing, overcomes all the social obstacles in her teenage life by hurling herself on to a speeding zebra and thereby winning the Kentucky Derby-like event and thereby unfreezing her grief-stricken, but also quite yummy, dad's previously-frozen/widowed heart.

My childless, mostly single neighbors have long ago gotten over the sight of a five-year old zooming around the parking circle area while beating herself with an imaginary whip and yelling out such memorable bits of dialog as "Get to the rail, Stripes. There's nothing stopping us now from achieving our foals in life. You've got to watch it bad enough. Sir Trenton's stall needs mucking out. We did it!!! MOMMY! Remember you're NOT Mommy now; you're supposed to be Max."

Only the most child-savvy observer would ever understand that Max is actually on loan from another medium altogether - TV. Max is, of course, the also-quite-yummy riding instructor from The Saddle Club series. Believe me, if there were no Yummy Widowed-While-Tragically-Young Dads in tight jeans sauntering by in all these kiddy shows, I wouldn't be watching them in the first place. I'd be reading the Times since way back when all those WMD were being unearthed right and left in Iraq. And I'd have stood up and hollered about it too, just like all those reporters at all those press conferences W was giving before we set the war machine, excuse me, The War On Terror, in motion.

Of course I don't have a clue as to how the press corps is supposed to be doing its job these days. The Motherhood erased the motherboard for the professional side of my brain long ago. But then again, I would do just fine without one if I ever went back to work in news.

Dahsua's Diary From Dixie

Don't miss this wonderful blog by a childhood friend of mine, Dorothy Fowles Kendall, from Columbia, SC. Doro, as she goes by now, was always a raging stand-out, given her fiery intellect (something that runs in her family) her beauty and her sheer audaciousness.

Keep in mind as you read about her reminiscences of Columbia that we were the hippies on the wrong side of the RR tracks, just down from Senate Street and a couple of blocks over on Green Street, quite close to the University, close enough for the National Guard's gas-fest to get into the apartment, but I have no recollection of my eyes ever chemically tearing-up.

We got packed up and stashed away to Gumby Farm (Kershaw, SC) shortly thereafter anyway, thus ending a childhood of urban delight, and commencing my still-lingering, though mostly dormant now, disdain of all-things-rural.

Professional Ops

Just found out there is a video available online that I worked on as field producer last year, with Lip Flap Productions out of Alanta. We shot the Atlanta portions you will see here:

http://www.kff.org/medicaid/kcmu062104oth.cfm

Warning: This is very wonky stuff, but one of the most interesting shoots I've worked in a while. It is all about the people who have been impacted by the Olmstead Ruling, a Supreme Court ruling that requires states to provide for the mentally disabled in home, community-based settings, rather than trap them indefinitely in (often terrifying) institutional care.

Many mentally disabled people are desperate to be out of institutions, but often have no way of getting beyond the bureaucracy of it all. Here in Georgia, Atlanta Legal Aid has fought to bring our state into compliance with The Olmstead Ruling, in ways you can see on the video.

June Forever

A fine a Southerner as there ever was, Shelby Foote, has passed on to the big Moon Pie in the sky. I'll never forget his response to a journalist's question about his writing routine: Mr. Foote said he liked to work in the morning for a few hours, then watch a little As The World Turns. ('Least I think that was his story. Of course mine's All My Children.) Maybe "take a little whiskey" later on in the evening. Not only could the dude write like a freakin' prince, he knew how to live like one. Raise a glass to his greatness when you can. Or at least have the guts to admit you wouldn't mind just watching "stories" every now and then than participating in our C-F of a rat race all day long.

There are plenty of new summertime pics on The Ava Chronicles. Please visit when you can, although the site only supports high-speeds. Blame He Who Must Not Be Named (Bill Gates) though, as I think this particular photo album site is a Microsoft-sellout.

Unbearable Stupidness of My Inner Being

Good grief. That last post, The Unbearable Lightness of Summertime, was just way too heavy. Honestly, my inner self typically inhabits a much flimsier realm, something along the lines of this quote, found on Dave Barry's band's, Big T and The Oaktones, fanclub page:

Yoko Ono - "I can break this band up too. Just watch me."

Yoko is just about the only person who hasn't "come back" lately. I always thought she was one freaky-ass, trippy lady. (To hell with Nicole Kidman, I should have dated Lenny Kravitz.)

And to prove the point, I once referenced her in something I wrote long ago for Creative Loafing, Atlanta's alt-weekly. See for yourself, but if you techno-morons, "technorons," can't access the .pdf file to read it, then don't whine back at me about your personal computer illiteracy issues. Get the help you need. (Your 6 year old will do fine if you're just spazzing out totally.)

The Unbearable Lightness of Summertime

I am greedy for summertime. Even in the midst of the hottest, most humid Southern day, when all desire seems tangled in the lushness of a grove of overrun Palmetto trees and magnolias set alive with the whine of afternoon cicadas I bicycle slowly by on the way to visit with ghosts wandering the fiery batteries of Ft. Moultrie, I am consumed with the inevitable - summer will come to an end. There is nothing I can do about this.

And so I throw myself into another summer. Or wish to, rather, when waking every morning to any day promising to be a really hot one. I want to feel baked concrete on the soles of my feet as I moreorless fall from the lounge chair into a heavily chlorinated pool. I sniff Coppertone like it was glue, high from the beach-as-a-child memory surge it powers in my nostalgia-ridden head.

I wish I was a painter so that I could paint the drops that rise up in my head that once rose up on the aqua-striped Tom Collins glasses with the little frayed wicker cozies around the bottom portion my grandfather would present to the guests, remarkable only for their dullness, who invariably stopped by the beachhouse late afternoons all through June, circa 1968. The country was on fire; Isle of Palms was not.

So I steal gardenias to fill the house with Eau De Blanche (DuBois), and to place in Ava's braids, from untended bushes laden with blossoms along Volberg Street in the city, no longer at the beach. This has been a prime year for gardenias; ignored, lovely shrubs of blooms just beckoning to be plundered, just like the purple, not blue, hydrangeas I covet from people's yards who never seem to gather them for themselves. Why not me.

So much wickedness just waiting to rise to the surface in summer, all in a state of air-conditioned arrestedness. I loath air conditioning. It forces Southerners to do way too much, to multi-task for instance. Southerners should never be forced to multi-task. That's not in our blood. What is in our blood is a desire to exist under huge rotating fans outdoors on porches near oceans, with mere ice-ridden glasses to cool our heated tendencies. We are hot blooded people. If only we could live that way.

Gratification Delayed No More

I read somewhere recently that being able to delay gratification is a sign of maturity. Tell that to The Princess who lives in the condo, excuse me, castle with me. I could get this blog updated every now and then, but typically I'm kept hustling about the estate keeping up with her innumerable commands to refill her glass of Pelligrino water, but only with three, NOT five ice cubes, or orders to "call Tech Support NOW, because I can't download the trailer for Racing Stripes FAST enough."

The Princess doesn't even talk the way I do. For instance, I'd say, "Git me uh glass a iiice waader right now hon." However, using perfectly uninflected English, The Princess haughtily remarks, "I'm thirsty." In French sometimes. I get ordered around so much, I'd swear that instead of my usual double-wide drawl, I now have a Cockney accent and really big bazooms, just like all those robust scullery maids in Merchant-Ivory movies.

But as long as delaying gratification doesn't bring on senility or the impulse to hoard 20K back issues of National Geographic, then I guess I'm ok with it as I am a chronic late bloomer. It's taken me over twenty years to realize about 99% of my hopes and dreams, etc. But damn, they sure are good when you get 'em at this advanced age!

My mother always said if children were given too much at an early age then they would never have anything to look forward to. It sure was great when we could put away the sticks and move on to the lovely stones, Mom. I'm up to two-by-fours now.

Astonishingly, the dream-realizations are coming along fast and furious of late. My head's all awhirl with possibility. Surely a Marc Jacobs dress, the Rapture and that indoor lap pool are close at hand. Two lifelong ones in just this one week alone.

I have officially become - a STAGE MOTHER! There was no prouder mom walking the planet when, today, I registered my child for lessons this fall with The Atlanta Ballet. I feel like a real mom now. I'm already counting her twirl-around thingees in my head when she does the pas-duh-der solo during Dance of the Rabid Squirrel at the Fox In The Theater.

So much to learn. So many things to shop for. Seriously, in my girly-girl head, there is no finer pinnacle of Ultimate Womanhood than that of ballet dancer. I couldn't be happier knowing that my daughter dances like a fairy princess already. And I'm not just saying this - I have the videotapes. And I'll SHOW you if you're not carefull.

So what if she's only five and the dancing looks, occasionally, like the fairy princess got pulled over after hours and is now taking a DUI test on the side of I-285, but hey, did I mention she's only five? And I've longed to walk into a real ballet school since I was five too, and now I've got all the reason in the world to do so. Luckily, The Princess can't get there fast enough on her own two wide little feet.

In other dream-realization news, I performed stand-up at the Punchline. Uh huh...one of the premier comedy clubs in the country, and there I was. It was my graduation from the Jeff Justice Comedy Workshoppe.

Only wish I'd been doing it for the last twenty years or so. It was like crack, being up there on the stage with the spotlight and everyone looking at me to say something funny. Apparently I did, because folks really laughed and clapped, or they said they did.

I was so nerve-racked up there, in a good way, that I couldn't really tell what was going on out there in the audience. Sounded like people responding though. Nothing hit the stage or me. Then again, the audience was made up of people who were, more or less, required to make us feel great for that three minutes - friends and family of the graduates.

Gotta tell you, those big 'ol spot lights sure are bright. Hope I had enough eye makeup on, although I'm confident you could see me in New Jersey from the amount of Clinique I eagerly slapped on beforehand. The Princess was mightily impressed by the glare of the purple eyeshadow alone. Her only remark though was, "I'd be SOOO good at that." Typical.

I'll surely make all of you watch the DVD when I get it, as most of you bums never made it to the show. But my heart and thanks really goes out to those who did: Doug, Amanda, Jonathon, David, Travis, and Kimberly. On a dark and stormy Monday night too.

Only Tom and Cheryl got a special Get Out Of The Obligation/What Was It You Said You Were Going To Do? pass as Elise, their beautiful, sweet nine-year old fell seriously ill that evening, and thus they couldn't be there. Elise is doing much, much better - whew. You go Elise! And Tom and Cheryl too.

Believe me, there's no place scarier for a parent to have to be on this planet than Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. But if you gotta go, that's the place you want your kid to be in. The Roches are the finest, most beautiful example of a VERY close, loving and strong family, those wacky guys, and they'll all make it through this I know.

Cheerio for now my lovies.

Meta and Cierra scout for rogue developers.

Stop High Density Development - and Scientology While You're At It

While America sits on its ass contemplating the idiotic behavior of pointless Scientologists, some folks are fighting a lonely, uphill battle to preserve nothing less than our national heritage. One such "preservation activist" is my aunt, Meta Carter, a truly remarkable woman one could blog about for days and never, ever scratch the surface of her astonishing character and life. She's done everything from horse wrangling on movie sets to founding Charleston Area Therapeutic Riding.

I know that anyone who has ever had the pleasure of knowing Meta would say she's probably the most loyal friend a person could hope to have. I know she is undoubtedly the most devoted aunty any niece could ever hope for. There is virutally nothing I know or say or do on a daily basis that is not relevant to the immeasurable influence she's had on me.

I also know Meta can be extremely shy, reserved and quite dignified, not at all comfortable in public settings, unless horses are somehow involved that is. But she's done something remarkable lately, likely struggling fiercely with her shyness to do so too, and transformed herself into a passionate, outspoken critic and opponent of irresponsible land development in the Charleston, SC Ashley River Historic District. Below is the text from a recent editorial she wrote for the Charleston Post and Courier that will give you an idea of what she's been up to lately.

If your family is still pondering a summer vacation spot, I urge you to consider visiting the South Carolina Lowcountry area - while you still can. There is an insidious, deplorable race being run right now to greedily grab, destroy and develop what is left of this critical portion of our nation's land, culture and history.

Thank goodness for people like my aunt Meta, her brother Heyward Carter and others who are willing to give virtually every resource at their disposal to a critical conservaton effort so that we can possible keep, as Southerners and as Americans, a vital and a stunningly beautiful part of the planet to treasure and enjoy.

If we stop giving a shit about development-run-amuck, then all we're ever going to get is written-up in the New York Times - just like Atlanta.


THE POST AND COURIER, May 24, 2005:
I grew up in the Ashley River Corridor and returned here 20 years ago because of all the beautiful places around the world where I have lived and visited, this landscape is the one that moves me the most.

I have just returned from another deferred meeting concerning the Watson Hill development. I'm angry and incredulous, like many other opponents of this development who drove to this mid-afternoon meeting only to be met with a sign on the door that signified that our efforts were in vain. Again. The Watson Hill development crisis has blindsided the community. We should have seen this coming and begun work a decade ago on a plan to preserve the Ashley River Corridor.

Approval of the Watson Hill development means a bleak future for the Ashley River Corridor; it means that there never will be a plan for preservation here … it will be too late.

Future generations of residents will regret that their predecessors did not have a vision for the way things should be, or did not make that vision into a plan. Future residents will not have a choice, because once a rural environment is changed so drastically, the damage is irreversible; once natural resources are gone, they are not coming back.

This type of high density development, the consequent huge increase in traffic, the Glenn McConnell Highway extension that will have to be built through what is now forest land is destructive.

Poplar Grove is an example of how a good, well planned development in a rural community can balance preservation of natural resources with very high profit for developers. Why can't Watson Hill follow this example?

Approval of Watson Hill will be a disaster. Refusal of this plan will be a triumph.

META CARTER

The Pavement Ended In Buckhead

Edna Earle could sit and ponder all day how the little tail of the "C" got through the "L" in a Coca Cola sign. Eudora Welty, The Wide Net.

Just got back from attempting to live the dream - again. Made it about 48 hours this go-'round before I got so fed-up with my own kid, I just packed up and drove down the mountain laurel-laden road and on out of Lake Rabun, the tranquil, mountain home site to many seriously Old Atlanta families, with a few assorted Yankees and New Money types thrown in to give people something fresh to gossip about every other generation or so.

Here are the results of my Single Moms' Memorial Day Getaway Survey:

Number of novels-per-mom envisioned reading lying on dock: 2-4.
Number of New Yorkers anticipated devouring from cover to cover: 4-6.

Actual number of pages of novel read: 8.
Number of paragraphs of one New Yorker article gotten through without "Mommy, I'm HUNGRY. Fix me something NOW!" bellow: 10
Number of "Mommy, I'm cold"s registered: 76
Number of "Mommy, I'm hot"s: 156
Number of "Mommy, the other kids won't play with me"s: 1,242
Number of "Mommy, this life jacket is making me too sweaty"s: 246
Number of "Mommy, what are those teenagers doing in those bushes over there?"s: 7
Number of kids parading through room when just dozing off for nap: 5
Number of "Mommy, there's just too much water in this lake"s: 1
Number of "Just Stop Whining"s issued from Just-Settled-Into-The-Boxed-Wine-and John McCain-Article mom: don't ask
Number of Euro-trash nannys wished for: dozens

Required Reading

Occasionally on this blog, I want to enthusiastically refer you to something remarkable, such as this Atlanta Magazine article about loving and caring for aging parents. I see so much courage and heart in my peers who are now stepping up to the plate with this timely issue. Warning: take your time and a hankie to the PC with you:
http://www.dougmonroe.com/assisted_loving.html